Perk-Munch

What’s with brands getting cheeky in their commercials, you wonder. If mocking your competitor makes you look any better than them and gets consumers flocking to you, than it’s worth the mockery. But, that hardly ever happens.

If your competitor is as cheeky as you, it can boomerang and they could end up with the last laugh. Especially because this is the age of social media where everything your consumers say, is amplified with good measure. We experienced this lately with the leading wafer chocolate bar brands, Cadbury Perk and Nestle Munch while the two were at war, armed with cheeky ads.

It all started on February 1 (ironically the month of love!), when Cadbury India launched its new commercial to promote the ‘enhanced’ Perk. The central idea was to emphasize that the new Perk was heavier with twin bars and four-wafer layers, yet priced at Rs. 5 like the other bar (hinting at Nestle Munch).

The Cadbury Perk ad is a hilarious one, where one son Monu leaves home because his father gave a Perk to his brother Sonu, and the other wafer chocolate to him. He explains that Sonu’s Perk was 17 grams and had four wafers, whereas his had only 11.5 grams and three wafers. The partiality clearly denoted his father did not love him. All this is being read out through a letter he leaves for his dad.

Watch the Perk ad:

In retaliation, a good 15 days later, Nestle Munch launched its ‘Munch ka Punch’ ad. The idea was to tell the country and more so to Cadbury Perk that the weight of a wafer chocolate does not matter, what mattered was its taste and crunchiness.

It begins with a punch – “Some chocolates were harmed in the making of this commercial. #MunchKaPunch”. This time it is Sonu who leaves home with a sad and angry letter to his dad. He complains of having been given the heavier wafer chocolate while his brother was given the tasty and crunchy Munch. He informs his dad that chocolate is not eaten for its weight, but for its taste and suggests him to use the heavy chocolate as a paper weight!

Watch the Munch ad:

Needless to say, social media voted for the Munch ad, they loved the retaliative punch. It also helped that the ad was accompanied with an apt hashtag ‘#MunchKaPunch’ that went viral on Twitter. This also helped increase visibility. While the Perk ad uploaded on Feb 1 has garnered 148K+ views, the Munch ad uploaded on Feb 14 has garnered 246K+ views till date.

Here are some of the tweets appreciating #MunchKaPunch:

Amid all these punches on social media, another brand took the cake. The Mantastic Man from Old Spice has pulled a fast one with this tweet featuring the country’s hottest male supermodel and the Old Spice India brand ambassador, Milind Soumen. Taking inspiration from Plato, it puts both brands to rest while cleverly defining the Mantastic Man!

https://twitter.com/OldSpiceIndia/statuses/437881875994927104

Seriously, who cares if a wafer chocolate weighs 17 gms or 11.5 gms; its the choice and availability that decide what the consumer buys ultimately. In the age of social media, it is the consumer who has the last laugh and brands and digital marketers need to be wary of that.

Image courtesy: https://twitter.com/NichiketVejare